Founders equity (> 20%) == Same risk as founders, same pay as founders. Employee[0] equity (<20%) == some salary depending on equity stake. Whether it's a YC

Founders equity (> 20%) == Same risk as founders, same pay as founders. Employee[0] equity (<20%) == some salary depending on equity stake. Whether it's a YC company or not doesn't matter. There are now over 250 YC companies, and 60 in this current batch. They are _all hiring_. You have a choice. There are over 300 startups funded through Angel List this past year (a number of them YC'ers). They are all looking for engineers as well. Google is looking for thousands of engineers, Yelp a couple hundred(pre IPO), Zynga a couple hundred (pre IPO), Facebook a bunch (pre -IPO), Twitter a couple hundred (pre-IPO). And, they are all competing for the same talent pool... you. Not only that, but if it's a current YC company, you know they just got around $180k in money right off the bat, so they have a bit of something in the bank to pay you.